Plate 48. Mormon Family, Great Salt Lake Valley
Medium
albumen print
Dimensions
image/sheet: 23.2 × 29.5 cm (9 1/8 × 11 5/8 in.) page size: 32.4 × 46 cm (12 3/4 × 18 1/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Avalon Fund and New Century Fund
Accession Number
2016.155.1.48
Art Historical Context
In 1869, as the transcontinental railroad linked American East and West with the driving of the Golden Spike, photographer Andrew Joseph Russell captured the rugged pioneer spirit of the Great Salt Lake Valley inPlate 48. Mormon Family*. Russell, a Civil War veteran official photographer for the Union Pacific, documented the transformative expansion into the American West through his acclaimed *Rocky Mountain Series*. Thisen print, prized for its sharp detail and warm tonal range derived from egg-white emulsion on glass negatives, offers an intimate portrait of Mormon settlers—a community that...
About the Artist
Andrew Joseph Russell · 1830–1902
Andrew Joseph Russell (1829–1902) was a pioneering American photographer whose work captured the raw drama of the Civil War and the monumental engineering of the transcontinental railroad. Born on March 20, 1829, in Walpole, New Hampshire, to Joseph Russell and Harriet Robinson, he grew up in Nunda, New York, where he developed an early passion for painting, creating portraits, landscapes, and eve...